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OUT OF LEFT FIELD |
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To Like Soccer, But….
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Let's face it: Most Yanks
think soccer's a dull game
of TheColumnists.com
I have been watching the
World Cup action on and off the past few weeks. I am like most
Americans, I fear, because I don’t get it. I would like
to share the world-wide love of the game, but for all the hype
and raised expectations at World Cup time, it comes down to this:
Soccer (football to the world) is a dull game for most Americans.
Soccer is a back-and-forth game that lacks the appeal of our back-and-forth games. It doesn’t have the scoring of basketball or hockey. It doesn’t have the violence of football or hockey. It doesn’t have the history of baseball, an essentially dull game that would never take off if it had to take off from scratch here.
The hyperbole of the announcers and some of the fervor of U.S. scribes trying to sell soccer is off-putting. One announcer on ESPN said at one point of a 1-1 game between Spain and Tunisia, “This is an incredible, incredible game.”
George Vecsey, the fine New York Times
columnist, who does such honorable work enlightening American
readers about soccer, illustrated the difference in mentality
of soccer adherents and American sports observers. He called
a 1-1 tie between the United States and Italy “a classic.”
This was a game in which the only U.S. goal was not even scored
by an American, but was deflected into his own goal by a chagrined
Italian.
There is no way any American sportsnik would call a 1-1 game
“a classic.”
The TV announcers can be emotional about a goalkeeper making two or three excellent saves in a game, when we are used to seeing hockey goalies making a dozen or more good saves in a game.
What I like and dislike about World Cup activity:
I like the color. The flamboyant clothes and painted bodies of fans, the colorful uniforms. I like the cheering and singing of the fans.
I don’t like the offside rule, which nullifies many possible scoring chances in a sport that needs scoring. I would allow a player to be offside up to the point of entering the scoring area, the box. There is a wacky part of me watching a scoreless game that would even eliminate the goalkeepers.
I love the goals when they come because they are so few and far between. And I like the hugging of the players and the celebrating of their fans that a score produces.
I can’t understand the timing aspects of the game. The clock runs continuously, permitting stalling. The extra stoppage tacked on after each half hardly makes up for the time lost in the 45-minute halves. I kept a clock on one game and calculated that the clock ran during non-play for 12 minutes and 15 seconds (12:15) of the 46 minutes of game time counting a minute of extra stoppage time. The nonchalance of players as the clock ticks away the final minutes of a close game has to be frustrating for the trailing team and fans. Soccer should introduce 40-minute halves with the clock not running during stoppage of play.
I like the sizes of the players. They are ordinary-sized blokes, not goons like basketball players or behemoths like football players.
I don’t like the tackling that prevents an artist dribbling, dodging defenders. A soccer player can’t do with his feet what a basketball player on the dribble can do, but he at least should be allowed to show his artistry without being tripped up. I don’t like tripping in any sport.
I like the singing of their national anthems by most of the players from other nations. Most of the U.S. players, like most of our pro athletes, don’t sing the national anthem. Of course, our anthem is close to unsingable.
I don’t like the feigned injuries so much a part of the game. It’s hard to see how this can be called “the beautiful game” when bozos are flopping all over the place trying to induce foul calls.
I like the pride shown by smaller nations and their fans in being given one of their few opportunities to be on the international stage provided by the World Cup.
I think too many of the TV announcers are amateurish. They constantly say what teams and players "should do or must do" rather than informing what actually is happening and why. And the non-stop chatter at each game soon becomes an irritant.
I like the sportsmanship of players picking up fallen opponents. I like the handshakes before the game, the exchanging of shirts afterward.
I questioned the unrealistic high expectations raised by TV and newspaper people about the chances of the U.S. team. And I found the TV analysts making too many sore-loser critiques about the American failure, not pointing out the simplest explanation of all: The other teams were superior to the Yanks.
I like the sportsmanship of teams kicking the ball out of bounds when its opponents deserve to have possession of the ball.
To be fair I should add what my pal Anne Wood has to say about it: "Soccer/football is for the girls. Look at those calves, those bulging muscles, that flying hair, that sweat, the shoulders--those hunks. They run all the time up and down the whole field; none of that defense-offense timeout stuff. They are real men who don't have to hide behind a lot of pads, helmets and uniforms. At least I can see who they are."
Well said, Anne, but I fear that somebody got it right when he said, “Soccer here is the game of the future-and always will be.”
©2006 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs
caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustration is from
IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San
Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted June 26,
2006.
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can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Stan Isaacs. To send an
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